


gold and silver line my heart

by cakecakecake



Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Sweethearts, Childhood Trauma, F/M, Growing Up, High School, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, frenemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25593088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakecakecake/pseuds/cakecakecake
Summary: the blunt edges of her hidden locket dig into his sternum as they kiss.
Relationships: Helga Pataki/Arnold Shortman
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	gold and silver line my heart

**Author's Note:**

> for ambience: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM8qB87-OLE

“So do you love her?” Gerald asks him.

It’s the night before their flight back to the states. They’re up later than they should be, whispering and snickering under blankets. Arnold’s parents are fast asleep on the bunk below them. The lights are out all across the city. (it’s so quiet.) (so different from home.)

He doesn’t know how to answer -- he’s not sure that he can. 

For the longest time, it hadn't made sense. 

A year ago, they were on the rooftop of a corporate tower just minutes before their neighborhood was about to be bulldozed. She was the reason it hadn’t happened. (she was the reason for a lot of things, things she had yet to tell him.) She helped him and Gerald, gave them all the right tools to succeed, and said it was all because she loved him -- only to take it back the moment they were back on solid ground. 

She went back to spitting venom and shoving him against lockers, and he fought so hard to forget about the mentions of devotion shrines and alleged stalking. There's no way she could have been serious. The idea that Helga G. Pataki could be in love with him had been the most absurd, preposterous, farcical thing he or anyone who knew either one of them could come up with --

Then he saw her locket, tawdry and gold-plated and fitting perfectly into the slot of the mechanism that would wake up his missing parents -- and _all_ of it made sense.

So he kissed her, because that made sense, too. Because he wanted to. And as soon as they broke apart, he found himself aching to do it again.

Does that mean he loves her? He still isn’t sure. He’s thinking, learning -- about himself as much as her. About the way she’d smiled at him from across the hotel lobby as their families talked and ordered dinner. His heart skips a beat. 

He _does_ have an answer for his best friend, but now he’s snoring at his side. Arnold smiles up at the ceiling.

“I will.”

***

They don’t hold hands on the first day of school. (well, technically they do) (but only for five seconds before she jerks away and scolds him) (so it doesn’t count.)

He wants to, desperately -- it’s all he can think about for the week leading up to it. He watches his parents kiss and feels a dull ache in the pit of his chest. They’re always kissing, it seems -- or holding hands. Just touching each other, constantly, in one way or another. It makes him feel warm and tingly and strangely cold, all at once. 

His mother’s in the garden, trimming weeds and potting flowers. His father sneaks up behind her and snaps the straps of her tank top. She’s a little sun-burnt, so she is _not_ happy. She yells some profanity Arnold’s never heard before and blasts him square in the face with the hose. Laughter explodes between them. They chase each other around the yard and Arnold wonders if these are the kinds of things grown-ups talk about when they say that some things never change. 

Maybe someday, he wonders (hopes), he’ll have a garden of his own to chase Helga around in. He doodles lemon-lilies and magnolias in the corner of his history notebook during third period. After class, he asks her what her favorite flowers are.

“Peonies,” she huffs, bashful and blushing. (he’ll remember that.)

***

She taps on his window at some unholy hour of the night. It’s late and his parents don’t know. (his grandpa knows, probably.) (if he does, he doesn’t say anything) (and he never will.)

Helga’s still wearing her clothes from school that day -- a pink coverall dress, corduroy with a lacy trim. The top button is undone. He can faintly make out the outline of her locket under her white smock. Her sneakers are dirty and one of her tube socks has a hole torn at the knee. Must have snagged something on her climb up. 

It tastes like cherry chapstick when they kiss.

“Can I read one?” he asks her once their lips break apart. Helga scoffs.

“In your _dreams_ , bucko.” 

“Just one? Please?” he begs her, grinning, holding tighter to her hands. He can feel her pulse rabbit in the dips between her fingers. 

“No one’s gonna see those poems until I’m _dead_ and _buried_.” She kisses him again, an attempt at shutting him up. It’s a fruitless effort. He smiles against her mouth and asks her one more time. (he’d go to bed that night with a new bruise on his arm.)

“ -- remember all the times _you_ used to bring girls up to the roof -- ” he would hear Grandpa say the next morning, wandering into the kitchen for breakfast. His father turns a funny shade of magenta as Grandma passes him a plate stacked with pancakes. 

“That skylight of yours has quite the view, doesn’t it, Arnold?” he asks him.

“It sure does, Dad,” he smiles.

***

Their friends still don’t know.

Well -- they do, but they don’t. Gerald knows and Phoebe knows, but they don’t tell anyone else. (they don’t really need to.) Nobody knows what happened at the shrine of the Green Eyes except the four of them. Only Gerald saw them kiss, and it took until the plane ride home for Helga to tell Phoebe. 

But after the first week of middle school, their friends start looking at them funny. They start asking why suddenly it seems like they’re always together. Always partnering up for projects, walking home together every day, meeting up at each other’s lockers before lunch. Passing notes and making faces at each other.

They’re not _just_ friends. Nobody’s foolish enough to believe that -- but Helga insists they keep it under wraps. It’s not so much a secret as it is a safety net. They’re only eleven, they don’t know what they’re doing. Neither of them know if they’re even allowed to date -- if Helga’s parents actually even _care_ , or if Arnold should ask his parents or his grandparents if it’s okay.

It’s all really overwhelming, he thinks. She thinks so, too, so they come to an agreement. It’s easier this way, to just not call it dating -- not call it anything. They _are_ friends, so they’re not lying, not exactly.

Nobody makes a big deal about it, anyway. _Harold wouldn’t know feelings if they bit him on the leg_ , Helga had said -- and kids like Stinky and Sid and Eugene have their own "somethings" to figure out. They’re all going through it.

Arnold’s still got a lot to figure out, he thinks, but he is sure of one thing: he really loves being with Helga, and Helga is happy. That’s all that really matters.

***

Her parents don’t want to be friends with his parents. (or with anyone, really.) His mother tries to reach out to them and is met with excuses. They don’t seem to know (or care) what Helga ever gets up to -- they don’t pick her up after book club and they don’t show up for conferences. They’ve always been strangely absent from her life, and that’s what Helga called normal. It’s not until he talks to his parents about it that he considers that perhaps, it’s not.

He tells them what he knows about Bob and Miriam Pataki one night. They look anxious, worried in a way that makes bile rise in his throat. Their faces are pale when they ask him to wash up and go to his room. He can hear them talking harshly with Grandpa down the hall and he frets that he’s done something wrong, if maybe somehow, he’s betrayed Helga’s trust. He doesn’t tell her they talked.

The next time she comes over, his mother gives her a hug. She goes a little stiff at first, but slowly, she sinks into it, clutching her waist. She tells her she’s welcome to visit any time she needs to -- that the boarding house is a safe space for her. 

Arnold doesn’t understand what it means.

***

When he asks her to the dance, she says no.

He comes to her doorstep with peonies and a little pearl barrette and she cries. He lets her. She apologizes for crying. She doesn’t know why she does it, she says. Arnold thinks he might know. 

Gerald doesn’t go to the dance either. It’s game night at the boarding house and Grandpa orders pizza and it’s still warm enough to watch a movie on the rooftop. Arnold is perfectly fine with not going. 

Besides, he can hold her hand, here.

***

He writes her a poem for Christmas. (it’s bad) (she doesn’t say it’s bad, but he knows it is)

_your eyes as bright as summer night,  
two shining stars, burning bright,  
how do i long to fly amongst your sky_

It has a cadence and it rhymes, but it lacks all the magic and flowery imagery of her prose. She tells him it isn’t fair to compare their work -- she’s been writing since she learned how to hold a pencil. It’ll take some time if he wants to get good.

(he wants to, for her.)

***

Big Bob Pataki pursues a new business endeavor. He’s moving his family across the country in June, right after school lets out. They won’t even get one last summer together. They have four months left.

It feels like the end of the world. 

Valentine’s Day is bittersweet. They walk past Chez Paris and Helga asks him if he remembers meeting Cecile there. There’s something striking about the way she’s curled her hair tonight. The gears in his head grind to a halt. 

Arnold laughs, and she laughs too. He must be the biggest fool alive. He asks her what else she's been hiding.

"One secret at a time, Hair Boy."

***

The flowers are in bloom. Lilac and violet petals dance in a flurry across the vacant lot as Arnold and his friends gather for one more game before it’s paved over -- a bar is going up in its place in a matter of weeks.

Arnold knocks it out of the park. Dirt and gravel stain his only good pair of jeans as he slides across home base. They win four-to-nothing. Helga hugs him on the pitcher’s mound in front of God and all their friends and everyone, and Arnold has to fight with every fiber of his strength to keep from crying. 

Everyone gathers at the pier for tacos. Kicking rocks into the water and waving to Sheena’s Uncle Earl as he paddles off toward Elk Island. It takes the combined efforts of Phoebe, Nadine, and Gerald getting everyone in a line, but they manage to get a group shot on Rhonda’s camera phone. Eugene blinks so they take it again. Rhonda doesn’t like the angle of her face so they take it again. The third time’s the charm -- everyone is smiling. 

(it’s the last photo taken of them all together like that.)

Helga would try to be inconspicuous about asking her for a copy. Rhonda promises she’ll email her one and invites everyone back to her house. Her parents aren’t home. They left her a credit card to order pizza.

“You wanna go?” Helga asks him. Arnold tucks a blossom behind her ear and pretends not to hear the pitchy sigh that trembles from her throat. 

The two of them ride to Rhonda’s place with Arnold on the pegs of her bike.

***

She forgets one of her notebooks on the dining room table. The pages are wrinkled and yellowed and a splatter of an old coffee stain browns the bottom left corner. He shouldn’t open it, but he does. Flips through the pages. It’s old, but it’s not full. There’s room left for a good bit of writing.

He tucks it into a shoe-box in his closet. She doesn’t ask about it the next day at school -- doesn’t even mention that it’s missing. Maybe she doesn’t realize, but that’s a big maybe. The girl sees All and knows All, there’s no way she hadn’t noticed. 

(he likes to think she let him have this one.)

***

_“Please don’t marry her. I’ll come back for you.”_

Helga’s not very good at hiding. That or he just knows her by now. She’s sniffling next to him on the couch, clutching the blankets under her chin. He feels her shiver, wet tears on his shoulder. 

“Maybe we should watch something else,” he offers, reaching for the remote. 

“No, it’s okay,” she insists. Cuddling closer so that she’s practically in his lap. “I looked up how it ends.”

She does that sometimes -- researches the end of the movies before they watch them together. He would hate it if not for the cute way she looks at him during the last five minutes, gauging his reaction. 

“Do they get back together?” he asks in a whisper. 

Her hands tighten in his. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see, Arnoldo.”

***

They say goodbye at the airport. He cries, but she doesn't. (he can tell she wants to.) It's late and stormy and he’s sitting in the backseat of Grandpa’s Packard, watching the wind blow the rain sideways when he realizes -- he loves her.

(he doesn’t tell her.) (he thinks he'll only make it worse.)

***

She comes back to the city, sometimes. He never knows when she’s visiting -- it doesn’t seem that anyone does. It’s always a surprise. He’ll be biking past the old arcade or Mrs. Vitello’s and something pink will catch his eye. She’ll be smoking in a dirty alleyway, or scribbling in a notebook with a purple pen on the curbside or at the docks. It always seems to be sunset when they meet.

They’re almost in high school, the first time. It’s the tail end of summer and the air is sticky and dense. She’s leaning against the bric-a-brac behind Green Meats with a rolled-up cigarette between her fingers. Stinky passes her a light. Sid looks engrossed in his phone. Arnold hits the brakes on his bike just as Helga looks up.

“Didn’t know you started smoking.”

She’s still taller than him. The buttons of her flannel are taut around her chest. Her hair is up in a mess of a bun and her bangs are a little too long to fit in it, so they fall astray around her eyes. She looks him over with a careful smile. 

“Is that a turn-off, Football Head?” 

She’s staying at Phoebe's, she says. He walks her there after a hot dog and a round of billiards with Sid and Stinky. 

She lets him hold her hand on the way. They don’t kiss goodnight. They come close, but Phoebe opens the front door just as his face gets within inches of hers. She flushes red all the way down to her neck. Arnold leaves in a hurry. 

She goes home the next day without saying goodbye.

***

Gerald and Phoebe break up.

They say it’s because Phoebe’s going off to do an exchange program next year, but it doesn’t feel like the whole truth. Gerald doesn’t want to talk about it and Arnold doesn’t want to pry. 

They’re on good terms, but it’s not the same. Almost like a rift within the friend group. Phoebe doesn’t hang out with them as much and Gerald is making new friends. Things are starting to change.

Curly’s going by Thad now. After a couple years of therapy and the right medication, he embraces his passion for the theatre and joins the drama program with Eugene. Arnold doesn’t get to see them much, but he comes to every one of their productions. They’re always ecstatic to see him in the audience, always hug him after the shows.

Harold pulls out at seventeen to get his GED. He starts working with Mr. Green part-time. He doesn’t talk to the rest of them much, but any time Rhonda throws a party, he shows up to hang out. 

Sheena and Nadine join the marching band -- cello and harp, respectively. They would spend every summer at band camp and always had a crazy story to tell when they would come home in August. Sometimes Arnold wonders if Rhonda keeps close with them just to hear the gossip.

Sid and Stinky start writing music and playing shows at little hole-in-the-wall places across town. (all of their old friends come out to see them) (the one thing they keep in common.) (their own unspoken promise.) They sing songs about heartbreak and isolation and second chances, and every single one makes him think about Helga. 

He sends her one of their CDs when they come out with a demo. 

It takes two whole months for her to send something back: a hundred-page notebook filled to the margins with poetry, inked entirely in purple. Dried pink peonies pressed inside the last page. Arnold can’t read through the first passage without crying.

***

Writing isn’t working, he thinks. It’s frustrating, almost agonizing in the way it trudges up painful, gut-wrenching memories. He’s indulging in his own turmoil. He can’t fathom how she could do this and _like_ it. Maybe he’s going about it the wrong way, or maybe he’s taking it too seriously. _Write about how you feel_ , she said.

He’s sprawled across the shaggy rug, skimming over his own chicken scratches and ink splotches -- little phrases and ramblings that make hardly a lick of sense. He thinks about the ratty little notebook she left behind and fumbles for it in his drawers. 

He’s had a sizable assembly of her most intimate balladry tucked away under old compact discs and cassettes for three years and learned nothing from it. 

_all my days have come to this,  
my secret heart, spent in one kiss.  
and though it comes from a pretender,  
not me, but Juliet the sender,  
may Arnold take my kiss for tender._

Arnold whimpers, biting back a goofy smile as he snaps the book closed. He’s both enamored and impressed -- she was nine when she wrote that. _Nine_. He sighs.

Maybe he could take up painting, or something.

***

Helga is the last one of his old friends to get a Myspace account. She hides her “Top 8”, (so does he), but everyone they hung out with since childhood is on her friends list.

She posts her writing, sometimes -- none of the romantic prose he’d been exposed to, but creative little narratives, short horror stories. Her work is captivating. Comments are turned off on her blog entries. 

There’s only one picture of herself uploaded, one that he took on his digital camera the last time she’d been in town. She must have taken it off his Flickr account. Arnold smiles. 

She’s leaning over the railing at the docks, cigarette in hand. The smoke is twirling around her arm and she’s covering half her face with her mouth. Her eyes are squeezed shut and she’s laughing. Her hair is tied back with an old pink ribbon. It was chilly that night -- his denim jacket is draped around her shoulders. (she’d gone back home with it.) 

(he misses her so much.)

***

It’s Rhonda’s birthday.

A loud affair, devoid of adult supervision and laced with beer and cheap wine. He hears the music blaring two streets over. Arnold comes with Lila, just as friends, for old time’s sake. With how busy she’s been doing show choir, he hasn’t caught up with her in a while. She hasn’t changed much from their early days -- still sweet as pie, the patience of a saint. A horse girl at heart. She’s telling him about her family’s farm down south when a shock of pink hair catches his eye.

Helga was invited, but nobody thought she was coming. Rhonda must have, because she looks totally nonplussed -- they share an awkward hug over the snack table and then the birthday girl drags Lila off to the den for some reason that goes over Arnold’s head. 

She gives him a sly look over her shoulder and pours herself some lemonade.

“No toast points this year?” 

She looks like she’s made of bubblegum. Chains and leather belts dangle from around her frilly plaid skirt -- her white socks slip around the knees. Jelly bracelets in a rainbow assortment squeeze around her skinny wrists and her white sweater hangs loose off her shoulders. Her bangs are short again. A familiar tiny barrette clips her shorter layers to the side. (tiny little pearls) (his heart squeezes) 

“You did that on purpose,” he murmurs.

She stumbles over her words like she used to. They bicker back and forth all the way to the basement where some of the guys are playing pool. They say hi to her like they just saw her yesterday and it’s weird and uncomfortable, but only for him and nobody else. No one says a word when she pulls him into a broom closet.

Helga pins him to the wall, the swell of her chest crushed harshly against his. The blunt edges of her hidden locket dig into his sternum as they kiss.

***

Somewhere along the line, she stops calling. The back-and-forth of emails dwindle from thrice a week down to once every couple of months, if he’s lucky. She stops posting to her blog. It’s not like Phoebe’s around to give him updates, so he has no idea what’s going on. She’s probably just busy, he tells himself. With therapy, with the debate team, with babysitting. Writing. She had mentioned a novel before.

Time is passing more quickly than he can process or adjust to. He doesn’t like it. His parents are talking about leaving again, researching the whispers of a potential crisis out on Christmas Island. He doesn’t want them to go and he doesn’t want to go with them. They tell him they haven’t decided, not for sure, but he can tell they’re getting restless. (they slept for nine years, of course they are.)

Arnold watches the sky overhead wash from slate to coal. A strike of lightning gives way for a shower of raindrops to spatter against the window panes, falling in the shapes of little stars. It’s the only noise in the room, save for the purr of Spumoni’s saxophone on vinyl, the whirr and hum of his desktop installing routine updates. 

A tattered pink book gathers dust in a drawer he never touches. Words that meant to reach his heart do nothing now but prick and prod and make a pin-cushion of it. They stick in his brain like a looping song, making the tired, lonely days without her more of a strain. 

He sends her a message on Myspace one day. (since she’s hardly ever checking her Hotmail account, it seems.) 

_are you still in love with me?_

Hardly a day passes before she replies.

**were you _ever_ in love with me?**

He can’t believe she has to ask. After all this time -- every kiss, every promise, all the hopes and plans and dreams they’d shared, she still doesn't know? 

And then it hits him like a falling cinder-block -- he’s never told her. 

All these years, and he's never told her. He’s never said _I love you_. His fingers tremble over the keyboard. He doesn’t want to say it now. He doesn’t want it to be like this. He can’t do this to her. 

He doesn’t want to think that their time has run out. (but maybe it has.)

***

He starts playing piano again. He’s a little rough without having practiced in so long, but he’s better with this than with writing. Sheena and Nadine suggest joining the marching band, but Arnold declines. Doesn’t want the added stress. Sid comes over to share a bowl on the rooftop and asks if he wants to be his keyboardist, and again, he politely declines, although --

“There _is_ this one song of yours,” Arnold says. “The one you played at the talent show last year?”

Sid coughs up, nodding and grinning. “Oh yeah, ‘Without You’ -- Stinky’s favorite.”

“Think it could use a piano accompaniment?” 

He takes another hit before passing it to Arnold. “I think we could work something out.”

***

Mr. Potts is seeing someone. He never brings her around the house, so Grandpa teases that she might not even be real.

It’s real when he moves out with her. It starts a domino effect of sorts. 

The Kokoschka’s divorce. It’s a messy one. Suzie stays, and Oskar disappears. One night he’s just gone. Arnold thinks of the younger redheaded lady that used to work with Suzie and wonders if that was it. 

Mr. Hyunh stays, much to Arnold’s relief.

His parents argue with Grandpa more and more about Grandma’s declining health. He feels selfish, but he doesn’t want them put in a home, even if they probably need it. They compromise and hire a live-in nurse to tend to her. Her name is Marta. Grandma loves her.

His father takes over in running the Arms and invests in renovations. They add a few rooms and expand the ones already there, finish the basement, add another kitchen. Soon every resident gets their own bathroom, too, even Arnold. 

A young couple moves into Ernie’s old space. Two twenty-somethings starting at the local community college. The guy likes photography and plants and the girl is a writer. When they’re not working or going to class, they like to hang out in the kitchen with Arnold’s mom. They teach Arnold how to brew coffee. Hugo and Annie.

Hugo’s a little rough around the edges. He’s mostly aloof and keeps to himself, but he has great taste in music. (Grandpa likes him because he’s pretty handy.) Annie’s different. She’s a little loud and a little eccentric and she gets into these moods, sometimes. She’s a fantastic poet. She helps paint his motorbike and gives him change for gas when he’s running low. Arnold would never tell anyone, but he prefers Annie. 

(it totally has nothing to do at all with the fact that she reminds him the slightest bit of someone.)

***

First football game of the season, senior year. He kisses a girl under the bleachers during half-time. One of Rhonda’s friends -- an upperclassmen. He forgets her name as soon as she tells him. He kisses her because he’s bored and she’s blonde and she thinks his scooter is cool.

All he can do with his tongue tangled with hers is wonder whether or not Helga’s doing the same thing, miles and miles away. If there’s someone else who looks enough like him to justify pressing up against him in a secluded corridor or empty classroom. Some poor imitation or cheap doppleganger to project on while the real thing is too far out of reach. 

The guilt is enough to make him sick.

***

Phoebe comes back. She and Gerald lock eyes from across the lobby of Bigal’s and Arnold can practically _hear_ a harpsichord string pulled taut between them.

They start dating again before the end of the week.

***

Prom is in a month.

Sid asks Rhonda and Stinky asks Lila and Arnold asks them both why they didn’t just ask each other. 

“It’s not that simple, Arnold,” Stinky would tell him. His smile is crooked and weak and doesn’t reach his eyes. He leans into his hand on his shoulder. “Who are you gonna ask?” 

Arnold frowns. “I wasn’t gonna go.”

***

It’s getting worse on Christmas Island.

A terrible threat to the wildlife -- native birds are dying and the sea life is suffering. Something about a viral outbreak. Eduardo is there. His parents decide they’re going for sure, right after graduation.

“Only for the summer,” his father assures him. “Maybe not even that long, if all goes well.”

“You can come with us,” his mother says brightly, hopefully. 

Arnold tries to smile. “I think I’d like that.”

***

“Just ask _somebody_ , Arnold,” Gerald presses him, untangling himself from around Phoebe. They’re going over charts for their astronomy class and Prom is in a week and he’s the only one of their friends without a date. "You got options. Think Sheena's still free. There's that Gloria girl too, from color-guard, she's nice -- "

“I’m not going, Gerald,” he drones on, exchanging glances with Phoebe, who’d already given up on trying to convince him. 

“It’s about Pataki, isn’t it?” he snaps at him, ignoring the worried peep out of his girlfriend. Arnold doesn’t look up. “Man, she hasn’t talked to you in forever -- ”

“Gerald,” Phoebe warns him gently, but he talks over her.

“ -- I think it’s time you let it go, man.” 

Arnold stares back at him, eyes stinging and watery for the onset of tears. Gerald looks like he regrets opening his mouth at all. He frowns, and both he and Phoebe get up from the table to come around and hold him. 

“You loved her all along, didn’t you?” his best friend asks. An echo of a conversation from years ago. 

“I did,” he mumbles. “I do.”

***

It’s raining on prom night. The sky cracks open just as the pre-game roundup starts at the Lloyd estate. Everyone is making a fuss, diving to take cover in the gazebo before the humidity wrecks any expensive hairstyles, but Arnold is just happy to see everyone together again. (mostly everyone.) It’s the first time he can remember all of them occupying one space in years.

“They’re selling tickets at the door, ya know,” Gerald tells him as he picks at the charcuterie board. “Just in case you change your mind.” 

Arnold laughs a little, shrugging hopelessly. “I don’t know, Gerald…”

“I’m just sayin’, it’s not too late.” 

The photographer flakes out an hour before he’s supposed to show up. Rhonda’s on the verge of tears, but Nadine manages to walk her back away from a metaphorical cliff before she can ruin her mink lashes and contouring. Arnold doesn’t have a fancy camera, but Curly -- Thad does, so he rides jetpack on his scooter across the neighborhood to grab it. 

“We could stop by your house too, if you wanna get ready,” he tells him after they pull out of the driveway. Arnold heaves a sigh. “We still have like, five hours.”

“It’s fine, Cur -- Thad,” he corrects himself, watching a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth. “Really. I’m just happy to see all of you guys together. I already got what I really wanted out of today.” 

“No you didn’t,” he combats him, a somber note in his even voice. The rain slows down to a trickle, but thunder is booming overhead. Arnold doesn’t say anything else. He speeds up, taking a different street back to Rhonda’s. Curly doesn’t press him any further, but he looks thoroughly crushed.

“It’s not what I envisioned, but it’ll have to do.” Rhonda casts a forlorn glance past the curtains of the bay windows. With a few lighting adjustments and careful placement of flowers, Eugene and Sheena transform the sun-room into a romantic setting for prom photos. 

Rhonda goes first, to pose with Sid. They look a little stiff and awkward, but she’s so beautiful in her red Caprini gown. Her grandmother’s glittering diamonds sparkle at her throat. Sid cleans up nicely too, with his freshly cut fringe and brocade vest. The red beetle-boots are a nice touch. They share a short hug before Rhonda asks for some solo shots and _that_ takes up a good half-hour. She beckons Curly over for a few quick (and discreet) shots of them together while everyone else is distracted, snacking and checking their hair. They have a hushed conversation Arnold would later pretend not to have heard, and then Gerald and Phoebe bustle over for their turn. 

Arnold feels like hot butter is sliding down the pit of his chest as he watches them giggle and kiss. Phoebe looks precious in a powder-blue tea dress, Gerald sharper than ever in a matching paisley suit. She got new glasses for the evening, an attractive pair of cat-eyes. They whisper things he can’t hear and their smiles are stunning. He wiggles his thumb against Gerald’s in their age-old handshake and hugs Phoebe when they’re finished.

Stinky and Lila go up next for two or three quick shots, just to preserve the memory, and Arnold feels some odd wave of nostalgia crash into him as he watches Lila fiddle with her up-do. He used to dream about this, as a little kid: about fitting a corsage around her wrist and twirling locks of her auburn hair around his fingers. There were nights that he’d spend thinking about his hands making circles on her waist, her hand on his heart, bright smiles stretched wide for the photos his parents would frame above the fireplace. He must be making a face, because Stinky asks him if he’s alright. 

“Is something wrong, Arnold?” Lila worries, stepping off the platform. She reaches for his shoulder and he shrinks away on reflex. 

“It’s nothing,” he tells her, searching her brown eyes for his own conviction. The dull ache in his chest is throbbing.

“Well that’s a dang lie, but you ain’t gotta say nothin’ if ya don’t wanna,” Stinky says, gently. “Why don’t I take that there camera off your hands for a minute, Arnold?” 

“Thanks, Stinky,” he says. His voice is cracking and Lila’s brows knit together.

“Why don't we go sit down,” she says, and Stinky finishes up taking everyone else’s photos. 

Lila guides him past the taffeta ball-gowns and three-pieces and settles with him on a chaise in the foyer. She shuffles her petticoat, smoothing out the lavender satin enough so it won’t wrinkle under her butt. She folds her delicate hands in her lap, proper like a lady, and Arnold thinks of what it was like to want nothing more than to hold them.

“Remember when I liked you?” he asks her. She nudges his shoulder with her own. 

“You mean when you liked-me-liked-me?” 

Arnold laughs. He watches the lines around her face soften as a knot wedges itself in his throat. “It was so easy, with you.”

“Easy how?” she wonders. 

“Because you weren’t afraid,” is his sober reply. “It didn’t matter that you never felt the same. Whatever I felt, you took it with grace -- you never put up a wall or -- or hid yourself from me. It was simple.”

Her dainty fingers come to rest in the crook of his elbow. He wishes it were as comforting as it used to be. She’s smiling, but there’s a severity in her voice that sounds almost foreign. Her eyes are narrow. “Is that why you never told Helga?” 

He looks back at her like she’s just slapped him across the face.

“Because if that were so, it would seem ever-so certain to me that _you’re_ the one who’s afraid, Arnold.” 

He’s connected the dots. (Lila has, actually) (regardless, they’ve connected.) He stares at her in a bewildered trance, like she’s just said the most incomprehensibly genius thing he’s ever heard. He’s too depressed to get excited, but the realization is enough to make his breath hitch. He’s had it all wrong, this whole time. He’s really that dense. It feels like his brain has been caught in the longest game of Connect-Four and somebody finally dropped the winning chip in the last slot. He tries to think of something, anything to say -- but thankfully, as much as things change, the more they stay the same, so Lila watches his brain buffer with inherent politeness as his brick of phone jingles with a text notification. 

It’s from a number he doesn’t recognize.

_are you home?_

“Who is it?” Lila asks, glancing at the screen. Arnold shrugs. 

“Dunno.”

_who is this?_ He texts back -- the reply is instant.

_fire escape_

His heart comes close to stopping in his chest. 

“Shit.”

“Arnold?” 

“Shit -- shit -- ”

He scrambles through his pockets in search of his keys. Grabbing his helmet, he books it for the front door, tripping over himself and the carpet as Rhonda stomps on her heels through the entrance hall.

“Arnold? What’s wrong?” 

“How long do we have?” he snaps the buckle under his chin.

“What?” 

“The _limo_ , Rhonda,” he rushes her, “how long until the limo gets here?” 

“Like, two hours, probably, _what are you plotting_ \-- ”

“Any way you can hold them? I gotta run home and get ready -- ”

She touches a hand to her chest as her jaw falls slack. “Hold the LIMO? Are you _crazy_ , Arnold? I can’t risk us being LATE to PROM -- ”

“Can you try? For me?” he begs. “I’ll be as quick as I can, I promise -- ”

Waving her arms, she concedes with a roll of the eyes. “ _Ugh_ , I can _try_ , but you better try to make it back by six -- ”

“You’re an angel, Rhonda -- ”

“ _Six-o’-clock_ , you peasant,” she jabs at him. “Whatever you’re doing, it better be worth it!!”

He bolts from the marble terrace, the engine of his bike roaring to life, tires screeching as they grind against the pavement. There’s the faint stench of burning rubber, clouds of smoke from the exhaust pipe creeping up the front steps. Rhonda coughs them away, watching the rain come down a little harder. 

“So he figured it out, huh?” Gerald hums, leaning against the open doorway. Rhonda whips around. 

“What? Figured out what?” 

“Did Arnold just leave?” Phoebe chirps, slipping her arm around Gerald’s. 

“Yup,” he says. 

Curly scrambles into the entry-way, groaning. “She’s late.”

“She’s still got two whole hours,” Stinky says thoughtfully, striding in the foyer with Sid.

“You’re very optimistic,” his boyfriend says. 

“Anyone care to tell me _what’s_ going on?” Rhonda huffs -- Lila lifts herself off the couch, glancing around with a curious eye.

“Gerald,” she addresses him, a brightness in her face. She looks impressed. “This is one of your ever-so elaborate schemes, isn’t it?” 

He snorts into a chuckle. “Not this time.”

***

Arnold Shortman doesn’t believe in fate.

There’s no such thing as destiny. Soulmates aren’t real. The fabric of the universe is wound together by a precarious thread, wispy and fragile, ready at any moment to unravel. Incomprehensible and unreliable. There’s nothing that’s ever happened in life that he couldn’t explain by way of luck, or lack thereof.

\-- but tonight, as he pushes open the hatch to his skylight, rain soaking through his windbreaker, he wonders what else it would be that could possibly bring Helga Pataki here, if not fate. Tonight, on prom night, of all the nights. What turns did the great Wheel of Fortune have to take for him to be granted the chance to watch her climb up his fire escape in a petal-pink princess gown, stray curls of golden hair clinging to her face as she mutters some unintelligible versification he’s definitely heard before? How else could he explain the odds of the one person he’d wished nothing more to see on the most significant night of his young life showing up here, on his rooftop, in the rain, less than an hour before he should have left? 

If not fate, then he must be the luckiest kid on the planet. 

“Helga,” he says, breathlessly. 

She gathers her skirts, panting and shivering, shrinking against the pigeon coop. Stares at him from under the thick fan of her lashes. Her makeup is running, just a little. She’s grinning something wicked. 

“Hey, Arnold.” 

For a moment, they just stare at each other, six feet apart -- her, under the scaffolding of the wooden hut, and he at the edge of the skylight. 

“I’m sorry,” they both say at once, and then, “shit,” at the same time, dissolving into quiet, harrowed laughter. He sheds his jacket and wraps it around her and her shoulders tighten, just a little defensively. He frowns at her.

“Helga, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I see you completely forgot about the chewed gum shrine and the breaking-into-your-house thing,” she says bluntly. A slight quirk of her lips. He chortles.

“You were nine.”

“I was insane.” 

“No you weren’t,” he tells her, his voice cracking. “I was, for waiting so long to tell you -- ”

He reaches for her hands, surprised that she lets him (and that’s part of his problem, he thinks.) (the shock of her guard coming down.) He chews his inner cheek, watching her throat work down a swallow. 

“I love you,” he says -- confesses. Her eyes go wider than tea-saucers, bright and glassy and fixed on his, like he’s the only thing she can see. His tempered, airy voice belies the wild thumping of his heart. “I have always loved you, Helga -- for your loyalty and bravery and wit and passion -- and I -- I’m so sorry I was too scared to say it -- ”

“You were scared ‘cuz I made you that way,” she tells him softly, a grade above a whisper. “You don’t have to be sorry, Arnold.” 

“Yes I do,” he stammers, “I ruined everything, Helga, I ruined _us_ \-- ”

She wrenches out of his grasp, only to ball her fists in the front of his shirt. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down Hot Wheels, you sound like you’re breaking up with me, or something -- ” 

Arnold has to laugh. “We were never _together_ because of me!” 

“No, you _idiot_ , we were never together because of unchecked anxiety and fear of abandonment and daddy issues!” she barks, shaking him. “Don’t go accrediting this fiasco to your cowardice when we’ve got a lifetime of trauma to blame!”

Arnold’s breathing stops short in his chest. Trauma, he thinks -- the very thing any outsider looking in believed to be what drew them together in the first place. 

It’s easy, coming to that conclusion when peering through a looking glass. It's not abstract to assume they were just two lonely kids without their parents, starved for love and seeking purchase in the first place they could find it -- in each other. It hadn’t mattered that it manifested in opposite ways: in her, an obsession so zealous it teetered on religious, in him, an acceptance so forgiving only Christ himself could rival his tolerance for her borderline abusive behavior. 

Two lonely kids who would have no idea what the wall standing rigid between them was made of, until they wanted it knocked down. That’s why, he thinks, he would tell anyone they’re wrong -- because the very thing thought to bring them together turned out to be all that kept them apart, and he doesn't want to let it hold them back anymore.

How old was she, he wonders, when she realized that? Or maybe she’s known all along?

“Always a step behind, aren’t you, Hair Boy,” she jokes, as if his thoughts had projected onto his forehead. 

He can’t argue with that. 

For one thing, she’s right. 

For another, her lips upon his would prevent it, claiming his mouth for a purpose far greater than speech. Whatever he would have thought to say would fall short of the justice a kiss would do, anyway -- so he falls into it, shoving her back against the wooden planks of the coop and swallowing the breath he’s stolen from her.

Helga melts, draping her arms about his shoulders as his hips sink into hers. The shock of her lips locked with his shoots straight to his groin, simmering his blood to a near-boiling point as his fingers tangle in her hair. Her mouth parts open, as do all his self-inflicted wounds, and she licks them, rolling her tongue over his as she claws at his shirt in a desperate attempt to be closer. Closer, as if their damp clothes sticking to each other’s skin isn’t enough. As if her leg wrapped around his hip isn’t enough. It’s going to have to be enough, for now. 

She gasps harshly enough to startle him out of his haze.

“Shit, what time is it?” she breathes, panic in her eyes. 

Arnold fiddles for his phone. “Quarter-til-six, wh -- ”

She shoves him away, combing her fingers through her disheveled hair -- “Fuck, we’re gonna be late!”

“What?” he asks, realizing the second he opens his mouth -- 

“You think I scaled your walls in a cocktail dress and heels for _fun_ , Football Head?”

His heart is trembling, a leaf fluttering in blustering wind. He clutches a hand to his chest, steadying himself. “Helga...you want to go to prom with me?”

She smacks a hand across her clammy forehead, dragging it down her face so hard she nearly takes the foundation off with it. “ _Yes_ , you useless himbo, criminey, YES, now hurry up and let’s go before Princess Rhonda locks us out of her chariot!”

***

They take Helga with them to Christmas Island. Their plane takes off at six the morning after Rhonda’s graduation party. A summer has never gone by so fast in his life. He comes home with a crumpled scrap of sheet music at the bottom of his satchel. He’ll have to call Sid once he’s back in town, just to make sure he likes the arrangement.

_i think i might have found god  
in the wrinkled pages of your diary  
yellowed peonies,  
words you gave to me,  
how i thought i could be without you is something beyond me_

He proposes on the rooftop with the ring his father had given his mother: a modest, simple little band of Green Eyes’ gold, flourished with a heart-shaped cut of kunzite. It slips so easily onto her trembling finger. There’s no prelude, no getting down on one knee. No hesitation. The simplest request he’s ever asked of her --

\-- and she would accept with a tearful giggle. “Doi.”

***

“ -- come on, Uncle Arnold, stop making stuff up -- ”

“Yeah, tell us how you _really_ asked her!” 

“But I’m not, that’s how it really happened!"

“No way! I don’t believe you for one second.”

“Why not?”

“Because you guys are the craziest grown-ups we know!”

“Yeah! I bet you asked her while you were dangling on a rope over a river of death!”

“Yeah, with sharks and alligators swimming around!”

“Nope, no rivers of death, no sharks -- just us on the rooftop, all by ourselves. Right, beloved?”

“Hmm? Oh, Arnold, are you telling them that story again -- ”

“Auntie Helga, tell him to stop lying!” 

“Yeah, he’s being lame on purpose so we’ll get bored and go to sleep.” 

“Well, it _is_ about that time."

“But Helgaaa…”

“Nah-ah-ah, no ‘but’ -- time to brush your teeth, you weasels. Up you go.”

“But we’re not sleepy!”

“If you go wash up right now, I’ll tell you about the time I got high on laughing gas and broke into Arnold’s house to steal a cassette tape.”

“OKAY!!” 

“YEAH!!”

“Great, I’ll meet you upstairs in five -- in FIVE, little missies, chop-chop -- ”

“Hey, Helga?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Did you -- not that it matters, honey, but...did you actually break into my house, back then?”

“Oh yeah, babe. More often than I care to admit.” 

“How many times?”

“Ha! That’s between me, God, and your grandmother, Hair Boy -- now pass me the remote, game’s about to start.” 

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

**Author's Note:**

> featured: helga’s soliloquy from “school play”
> 
> arnold’s electric scooter/motorbike: https://imgur.com/a/JvyxkTG
> 
> helga’s prom dress: https://imgur.com/a/HHqXArf
> 
> whose children are they babysitting at the end? take your pick


End file.
